On Sept. 15, Thomas Massie stood at the House microphone and read eight articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth into the record, and the next day Mike Johnson canceled Thursday's votes and called it "a stunt." Massie walks back in today, the first day Congress has sat since the election, and Punchbowl expects him to give notice of his privileged resolution, forcing a vote by Wednesday.
This time he needs Republicans who already lost their seats. Defeated members "have little left to lose," Axios wrote Sunday, and House leaders are bracing for enough defections to pass it. Hakeem Jeffries is "a hard yes." No whip count exists, in either party. Johnson's September trick needed a majority that still feared Trump. Tuesday took the fear away.
The House has impeached a Cabinet secretary twice in 237 years: William Belknap, Grant's war secretary, in 1876, by a Democratic House, and Alejandro Mayorkas in 2024, by a Republican one. Hegseth would be the third, and the first impeached by a House his own party controls.
